This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Early examples of computers were almost exclusively based on mechanical devices. Although electronic computers became dominant in the past 60 years, recent advancements in 3D micro-additive manufacturing technology provide new fabrication techniques for complex microstructures which have rekindled research interest in systems and methods able to carry out mechanical computations in response to various inputs.
Further to the above, in order to overcome the limitations of semiconductor electronics such as unstable performances and failures in extreme environments, researchers have been seeking for other computation approaches and logic computation devices on micro and submicro-scale, such as MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) logic gates and switches, all-optical logic gates, microfluidic logic devices based on droplets and bubbles, magnetic bubble logic, etc. Logic devices on an even smaller scale have also been proposed and studied, such as molecular logic gates and quantum logic gates. A major advantage of micro-mechanical logic devices is that they utilize energy in mechanical form and require no electrical power source or electronic components. As a result, such devices generate no electromagnetic signature and are highly insensitive to radiation damage. Furthermore, studies on computation reversibility have suggested that mechanical logic systems can theoretically be designed such that the energy dissipation in the system can be arbitrarily small, i.e., the computations consume nearly zero energy.
Several groups of researchers have started to explore the feasibility of mechanical computing systems. Merkle et al., arXiv Prepr, 2018 proposed a Turing-complete mechanical computing system Cooper, S. Barry, Computability Theory, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2017, based on rigid links and rotary joints. The mechanical computation operates under a clocked external excitation, and the signal is represented by the displacement of rigid links that is guided and constrained by two basic mechanisms named locks and balances. Ion et al., In Proc. 2017 CHI Conf. Hum. Factors Comput. Syst.—CHI '17, ACM Press, New York, N.Y., USA, 2017, pp. 977-988, designed a functional-complete Enderton, Herbert and Herbert Enderton, A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, Elsevier, 2001, mechanical logic system that is integrated with 3D-printed metamaterial mechanisms. The digital signal propagates as mechanical impulses between adjacent cells through the embedded bi-stable springs. The bistable spring strengthens the incoming signal in a similar manner to the domino effect and requires a manual reset after each calculation. Raney et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2016, 113, 9722, proposed a structure that propagates mechanical signals over arbitrary distances without distortion. Logic operators such as the AND gate, the OR gate and the diode logic were demonstrated.
From the above, it will be appreciated that a strong growing interests exists in mechanical logic systems and methods which require no electronic sensing components, as well as no electrical power for their operation.